On the Verge

Barring a ceiling I do not want to repaint, my dining room is ready for wallpaper.

Yaaaayyyyyyy!!!! from the peanut gallery.

This means in the past month I got the rest of the old paste off the walls.

Handy scraping tool

And finished washing the yucky mill dirt off from behind the trim.

And used Gardz to stabilize the surface of the drywall on the wall between the dining room and the kitchen.

Gardz = shiny

And used the Big Wally's to close up a plaster crack over the "archway' to the living room.  And to stabilize the plaster at the bottom of the left side of the north wall, and at the bottom edge of the west windows.

And spackled and sanded all the dents and holes and all that sort of thing.  (Used joint compound, actually, it being what I had on hand.)

And took down the register cover and spray-painted it hammered bronze.

Before

Screen wire cover, to keep the kittehs out of the ductwork

And used paint and walnut-tinted shellac to fake a natural finish on the silly undersized cornice molding.

And shellacked the window jambs and heads where they'll be exposed once the trim is back up.

And primed the whole room (and was glad I had enough left to finish the job).

And touched up the perimeter of the ceiling with primer where the shellac got out of hand.

And did the Big Wally's on a couple of corners of the ceiling where I discovered it was sagging a litle when I was touching up the perimeter.

And spackled and sanded the holes left from that, and hope no one notices, since a big enough chip of the ceiling paint didn't stick to the Big Wally washers such that I can get a computer match at the Big Blue Box Store, and I do not want to paint the ceiling!!

Before sanding.  Definitely.

Of course it helps to have an excellent Inspector of Works.

Wallpapering, which will entail railroading blankstock under and hanging the good stuff on top, will have to wait until I can be sure of a second pair of hands.  It's not a job I can do alone.

And yes, I'm pretty well reconciled to using the celery-green-tinged William Morris "Savernake" paper I have eight rolls of.  Not like I can return it after five years.  Or sell it on Ebay and replace it with another dye lot, the price has gone up so high.  I'll deal with it.  It should be fine.